A la conquête, une petite histoire du progrès, 2010-2013

In Romania, 30% of the population still cultivates the land. But for quite a while now, the country’s fertile but cheap land has been under invasion by industrial agriculture enterprises from the West. Because they benefit significantly from expedited access to European agricultural subsidies, these foreign enterprises are changing the situation in Romania, and changing even more the daily life of Romanian farmers.
From the village of Zagon at the foot of the Carpathian mountains to the city of Sibiu, Christophe Chammartin has travelled the roads of Transylvania since September 2010 and has photographed the various realities of Romanian agriculture. In this work of socio-poetical reporting, the artist gives us an account of something that everyone has at least heard about, but the stakes of which are still seldom discussed.